Folk-lore of Shakespeare Part 106

"I can here disarm thee with this stick, And make thy weapon drop."

And when he abjures the practice of magic, one of the requisites is "to break his staff," and to (v. 1)

"Bury it certain fathoms in the earth."

The more immediate instruments of power were books, by means of which spells were usually performed. Hence, in the old romances, the sorcerer is always furnished with a book, by reading certain parts of which he is enabled to summon to his aid what demons or spirits he has occasion to employ. When he is deprived of his book his power ceases. Malone quotes, in ill.u.s.tration of this notion, Caliban's words in "The Tempest" (iii.

2):

"Remember, First to possess his books; for without them He's but a sot, as I am, nor hath not One spirit to command."

Prospero, too, declares (iii. 1):

"I'll to my book; For yet, ere supper time, must I perform Much business appertaining."

And on his relinquishing his art he says that:

"Deeper than did ever plummet sound I'll drown my book."

Those who practise nocturnal sorcery are styled, in "Troilus and Cressida" (iv. 2), "venomous wights."

_Merlin's Prophecies._ In Shakespeare's day there was an extensive belief in strange and absurd prophecies, which were eagerly caught up and repeated by one person to another. This form of superst.i.tion is alluded to in "1 Henry IV." (iii. 1), where, after Owen Glendower has been descanting on the "omens and portents dire" which heralded his nativity, and Hotspur's unbelieving and taunting replies to the chieftain's a.s.sertions, the poet makes Hotspur, on Mortimer's saying,

"Fie, cousin Percy! how you cross my father!"

thus reply:

"I cannot choose: sometime he angers me, With telling me of the moldwarp and the ant, Of the dreamer Merlin and his prophecies; And of a dragon and a finless fish."

In "King Lear" (iii. 2) the Fool says

"I'll speak a prophecy ere I go: When priests are more in word than matter; When brewers mar their malt with water; When n.o.bles are their tailors' tutors; No heretics burn'd, but wenches' suitors; When every case in law is right; No squire in debt, nor no poor knight; When slanders do not live in tongues.

Nor cutpurses come not to throngs; When usurers tell their gold i' the field; And bawds and wh.o.r.es do churches build;- Then shall the realm of Albion Come to great confusion: Then comes the time, who lives to see't, That going shall be us'd with feet.

This prophecy Merlin shall make; for I live before his time."

This witty satire was probably against the prophecies attributed to Merlin, which were then prevalent among the people.[955]

[955] See Kelly's "Notices Ill.u.s.trative of the Drama and Other Amus.e.m.e.nts at Leicester," 1865, pp. 116, 118.

Formerly, too, prophecies of apparent impossibilities were common in Scotland; such as the removal of one place to another. So in "Macbeth"

(iv. 1), the apparition says:

"Macbeth shall never vanquish'd be, until Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill Shall come against him."

_Portents and Prodigies._ In years gone the belief in supernatural occurrences was a common article of faith; and our ancestors made use of every opportunity to prove the truth of this superst.i.tious belief. The most usual monitions of this kind were, "lamentings heard in the air; shakings and tremblings of the earth; sudden gloom at noon-day; the appearance of meteors; the shooting of stars; eclipses of the sun and moon; the moon of a b.l.o.o.d.y hue; the shrieking of owls; the croaking of ravens; the shrilling of crickets; night-howlings of dogs; the death-watch; the chattering of pies; wild neighing of horses; blood dropping from the nose; winding-sheets; strange and fearful noises, etc.," many of which Shakespeare has used, introducing them as the precursors of murder, sudden death, disasters, and superhuman events.[956] Thus in "Richard II." (ii. 4), the following prodigies are selected as the forerunners of the death or fall of kings:

"'Tis thought, the king is dead: we will not stay.

The bay-trees in our country are all wither'd, And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven; The pale-fac'd moon looks b.l.o.o.d.y on the earth, And lean-look'd prophets whisper fearful change; Rich men look sad, and ruffians dance and leap, The one in fear to lose what they enjoy, The other to enjoy by rage and war: These signs forerun the death or fall of kings."

[956] Drake's "Shakespeare and his Times," p. 352.

Previous to the a.s.sa.s.sination of Julius Caesar, we are told, in "Hamlet"

(i. 1), how:

"In the most high and palmy state of Rome, A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets; As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood, Disasters in the sun; and the moist star, Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands, Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse."

More appalling still are the circ.u.mstances which preceded and accompanied the murder of Duncan ("Macbeth," ii. 3). We may also compare the omens which marked the births of Owen Glendower and Richard III.

Indeed, the supposed sympathy of the elements with human joy or sorrow or suffering is evidently a very ancient superst.i.tion; and this presumed sensitiveness, not only of the elements, but of animated nature, to the perpetration of deeds of darkness and blood by perverted nature, has in all ages been extensively believed. It is again beautifully ill.u.s.trated in the lines where Shakespeare makes Lenox, on the morning following the murder of Duncan by his host ("Macbeth," ii. 3), give the following narrative:

"The night has been unruly; where we lay, Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say, Lamentings heard i' the air; strange screams of death; And prophesying with accents terrible Of dire combustion, and confus'd events, New hatch'd to the woeful time: the obscure bird Clamour'd the livelong night: some say, the earth Was feverous and did shake."

This idea is further ill.u.s.trated in the dialogue which follows, between Ross and an old man:

"_Old Man._ Threescore and ten I can remember well: Within the volume of which time I have seen Hours dreadful, and things strange: but this sore night Hath trifled former knowings.

_Ross._ Ah, good father, Thou seest, the heavens, as troubled with man's act, Threaten his b.l.o.o.d.y stage: by the clock, 'tis day, And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp: Is't night's predominance, or the day's shame, That darkness does the face of earth entomb, When living light should kiss it?"

_Supernatural Authority of Kings._ The belief in the supernatural authority of monarchs is but a remnant of the long-supposed "divine right" of kings to govern, which resulted from a conviction that they could trace their pedigrees back to the deities themselves.[957] Thus Shakespeare even puts into the mouth of the murderer and usurper Claudius, King of Denmark, the following sentence:

"Let him go, Gertrude: do not fear our person: There's such divinity doth hedge a king, That treason can but peep to what it would, Acts little of his will."

[957] "Traditions, Superst.i.tions, and Folk-Lore," p. 81.

This notion is by no means confined to either civilized or semi-civilized nations. It is, says Mr. Hardwick, "a universal feeling among savage tribes." The ignorant serf of Russia believed, and, indeed, yet believes, that if the deity were to die the emperor would succeed to his power and authority.

_Sympathetic Indications._ According to a very old tradition the wounds of a murdered person were supposed to bleed afresh at the approach or touch of the murderer. This effect, though impossible, remarks Nares,[958] except it were by miracle, was firmly believed, and almost universally, for a very long period. Poets, therefore, were fully justified in their use of it. Thus Shakespeare, in "Richard III." (i. 2) makes Lady Anne, speaking of Richard, Duke of Gloster, say:

"O, gentlemen, see, see! dead Henry's wounds Open their congeal'd mouths, and bleed afresh!- Blush, blush, thou lump of foul deformity; For 'tis thy presence that exhales this blood From cold and empty veins, where no blood dwells; Thy deed, inhuman and unnatural, Provokes this deluge most unnatural."

[958] "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 974.

Stow alludes to this circ.u.mstance in his "Annals" (p. 424). He says the king's body "was brought to St. Paul's in an open coffin, barefaced, where he bled; thence he was carried to the Blackfriars, and there bled." Matthew Paris also states that after Henry II.'s death his son Richard came to view the body-"Quo superveniente, confestim erupit sanguis ex naribus regis mortui; ac si indignaretur spiritus in adventue ejus, qui ejusdem mortis causa esse credebatur, ut videretur sanguis clamare ad Deum."[959] In the "Athenian Oracle" (i. 106), this supposed phenomenon is thus accounted for: "The blood is congealed in the body for two or three days, and then becomes liquid again, in its tendency to corruption. The air being heated by many persons coming about the body, is the same thing to it as motion is. 'Tis observed that dead bodies will bleed in a concourse of people, when murderers are absent, as well as present, yet legislators have thought fit to authorize it, and use this trial as an argument, at least to frighten, though 'tis no conclusive one to condemn them." Among other allusions to this superst.i.tion may be mentioned one by King James in his "Daemonology,"

where we read: "In a secret murder, if the dead carka.s.se be at any time thereafter handled by the murderer, it will gush out of blood, as if the blood were crying to heaven for revenge of the murderer." It is spoken of also in a note to chapter v. of the "Fair Maid of Perth," that this bleeding of a corpse was urged as an evidence of guilt in the High Court of Justiciary at Edinburgh as late as the year 1668. An interesting survival of this curious notion exists in Durham, where, says Mr.

Henderson,[960] "touching of the corpse by those who come to look at it is still expected by the poor on the part of those who come to their house while a dead body is lying in it, in token that they wished no ill to the departed, and were in peace and amity with him."

[959] See Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. pp. 229-231.

[960] "Folk-Lore of Northern Counties," 1849, p. 57.

We may also compare the following pa.s.sage, where Macbeth (iii. 4), speaking of the Ghost, says:

"It will have blood; they say, blood will have blood: Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak; Augurs and understood relations have By magot-pies and choughs and rooks brought forth The secret'st man of blood."

Shakespeare perhaps alludes to some story in which the stones covering the corpse of a murdered man were said to have moved of themselves, and so revealed the secret. The idea of trees speaking probably refers to the story of the tree which revealed to aeneas the murder of Polydorus (Verg., "aeneid," iii. 22, 599). Indeed, in days gone by, this superst.i.tion was carried to such an extent that we are told, in D'Israeli's "Curiosities of Literature," "by the side of the bier, if the slightest change was observable in the eyes, the mouth, feet, or hands of the corpse, the murderer was conjectured to be present, and many an innocent spectator must have suffered death. This practice forms a rich picture in the imagination of our old writers; and their histories and ballads are labored into pathos by dwelling on this phenomenon."

CHAPTER XXIII.